358 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
perception pass over into action. In the lower forms we 
have the devices, chiefly automatic, by which sensation 
transmitted to the sensorium reappears as motion. In 
like manner we find in man, besides these reflex trans- 
fers and the reflex connections formed by habit, that 
science becomes changed to art and knowledge to 
power. Power and effectiveness are conditioned on ac- 
curacy. Every failure in the sense organs, every form 
of deterioration of the nerves, shows itself in reduction 
of power. Reduced effectiveness manifests itself through 
the processes of natural selection as lessened safety of 
life. Thus the degeneration of the nervous system 
through excesses, through precocious activity, or through 
the effect of stimulants, shows itself in untrustworthy 
perceptions, in uncontrolled muscles, and in general in- 
security. Incidentally all these are recorded by fall in 
social standing. Similar failure follows from any cause 
impairing the recognition of the reality of external 
things. The sober mind is necessary to secure life. In 
general all civilized men are well born. 
They come of good stock. For the 
lineage of perversity, insanity, and even 
stupidity, is never a long one. The perverse, insane, 
and the stupid live through the tolerance of others. 
They can not maintain themselves, and in spite of char- 
ity and the sense of conventionality, the mortality caused 
by the fool-killer is something enormous. It is an essen- 
tial element in race progress. It grows with increased 
civilization, because of increasing complexity of condi- 
tion. It is the chief offset for the systematic life-saving 
which science makes possible. 
The recent “recrudescence of superstition,” a strik- 
ing accompaniment of an age of science, is in a sense de- 
pendent on science. Science has made it possible. The 
traditions of science are so diffused in the community 
The sober 
mind. 
